Well, actually, it's the price of a louder megaphone.
But such subtleties are lost on the modern-day Supreme Court, which is less interested in preserving the balances of Government and more in their own peculiar interpretation of the Law of the Land.
Republics also support fragmented self-interests. Probably even more so than democracies.
The Founders made the US Government a Republic because they feared the tyranny of the majority would trample out the rights and interests of minorities. They made it a Democratic Republic because they also feared the tyranny of entrenched minorities. Checks and Balances were arguably the single most important consideration given to every facet of their governmental design.
The destruction of the worker-employer bond even longer - back in the 1980s.
Tarrifs weren't primarily about environmental responsibility, although indirectly they worked in that direction by favoring local production with its more stringent environmental regulations. But Free Trade has pretty much killed that.
1950's Republicans would probably die of apoplexy. We gave Most Favored trade status to one of the world's biggest Communist countries.
Damn, I wish I'd known about that trick back then, that was exactly the problem I was having with mine. I've had a couple of 100$ all in one laserjets (both HP) since then. The one I've got now (I forget the model) is pretty decent, and obviously doesn't require its own nuclear reactor to print, but I do miss the reliability of that 30 pound monstrosity. I do, however, not miss the 5 degree increase in temperature around the thing when it was running though, lol
1KW is about right for one of the old-time laser printers. Warm-up power rush was a bitch and it was recommended not to put them on UPS's or lest they blow breakers.
I swore off HP devices. Most of the printer/scanner/whatever would still be working fine, but the paper traction would go all to hell and even new roller kits wouldn't fix them. Plus my scanner doesn't even offer replacement rollers for the duplexer part of the machine.
People talk about bug free code. It is a matter of won't, not a matter of can't.
Sometimes, there are products out there which can be considered "finished". Done as in no extra features needed, and there are no bugs to be found. Simple utilities like/usr/bin/yes come to mind. More complex utilities can be honed to a reasonable degree of functionality (busybox comes to mind.)
The problem isn't the fact that secure or bug free software can't be made. It is that the procedures and processes to do this require resources, and most of the computer industry runs on the "it builds, ship it!" motto [1]. Unfortunately, with how the industry works, if a firm does do the policy of "we will ship it when we are ready", a competitor releasing an early beta of a similar utility will win the race/contracts. So, it is a race to the bottom.
[1]: The exception to this rule being malware, which is probably the most bug-free code written anywhere these days. It is lean, robust, does what it is purposed to do, and is constantly updated without a fuss.
Once upon a time, I read somewhere (Yourdon, possibly) that the number of bugs in a software product tends to remain constant once the product has reached stability. The number for IBM's OS/MVS mainframe operating system was somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000!
It's been likened to pressing on a balloon where when you squeeze one bump in, another pops out, because the process of fixing bugs itself introduces new bugs.
And OS/MVS is about the most critical software you could put on a mainframe. You can't just Ctrl-Alt-Delete a System/370. Or power it off and back on again. Mainframes are expensive, and expected to work virtually continually. Mainframe developers were expensive as well, since after a million dollars or so of hardware and software, paying programmers handsome salaries wasn't as big an issue back then. Plus there was no offshore race to the bottom where price trumped quality at the time. In fact, there wasn't even "perma-temping" yet.
Still, with all those resources on such an important product, they could only hold the bug count constant, not drive it down to zero.
Actually speaking of OS/MVS, there's a program (IEFBR14) whose sole purpose in life is to do nothing. There have been about 6 versions of this program so far, and several of them were bug fixes. More recently, it had to be upgraded to work properly on 64-bit architecture, but some of the bugs were hardware-independent.
Back in the 1970s, General Electric created a company called Offshore Power Systems that was intended to build floating nuclear plants. I knew some of the people who worked there.
No such plants were ever built, though, and OPS is long gone.
I cancelled my subscription to another Linux magazine when they dropped paper. I figure I get fresher news from my RSS feeds and more up-to-date and more detailed technical info from blogs and project websites.
I truly do love my tablet for reading fiction and even the occasional reference manual, but the ability to randomly flip through a dead-tree magazine and idly learn about something that may someday become important is something I treasure and an e-reader just doesn't do it for me.
Larry wanted it to do something Sun never did - make a profit so he could build another yacht. He's been hoping to do that with other open-source acquisitions as well.
Unfortunately, people don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on open-source platforms, apps, and tools.
While I don't condone it, people in the Finance/Accounting departments have made complete applications in Excel. Then, they throw it over the wall to I/T and say "turn this into a web app for us -- it should take, what, two or three days?"
But again, I've seen plenty of complex spreadsheets that use way more functionality than I as a developer would ever use.
I'd say that you worked for the same company I did.
But at my company they waited until they'd exceeded Excel's row capacity and THEN they threw it over the wall. At which point they were having to break it up into multiple workbooks just to run the business while we scrambled to bail them out. Plus - yay! - critical corporate data existed on a laptop that they'd keep passing around (and occasionally taking out of town) and our IT department didn't backup files on desktops or laptops.
On the whole, I'm inclined to say that when you've gotten to the point that only 100% original Excel can do the job, you've probably reached the point where you shouldn't be doing the job in Excel anyway.
> The one thing that we didn't do (obviously!) was allow automated Windws updates. > Then again, considering the damaged that some Windows Updates have done to > desktop machines, I didn't even allow that on my desktop machine.
You have to perform OS updates in some industries. You might disable automatic updates, but that doesn't prevent damage, just that you'll be kicking it off manually.
Not always. Sometimes it's a matter of letting other people be your guinea pigs. Microsoft has on several occasions had to follow up an update with a corrected update, so in cases like that, you just ignore the bad update entirely and skip ahead to the better one.
The other thing deferred updates allow is the ability to do small-scale in-house testing before letting it loose on the entire infrastructure.
They want bureaucracy, they make the paperwork. Tell them to track windows and distro security pages, the changes are there. I would be toasted with that kind of tape, I updated my servers in a pinch immediately after the first news of heartbleed at 3 in the morning. 0300AM right. How about dusting your resume and changing jobs? Let them play the shuffling reports game alone.
I've served on a change control board. Every application and system update was supposed to be bundled to make the sysadmin's job easier, include a document that outlined the nature of the change and why it was needed, the instructions on how to apply the change, and the instructions on how to recover if it didn't work.
Change committee met once a week, approved/scheduled, deferred, or rejected changes. In case of emergency, the CIO or designated proxy could approve an out-of-band change request.
We didn't attempt to micro-manage changes, just understand the business risks and rewards. Obviously, the more details you could capture the better prepared you were to understand the consequences and the ways you could recover. But when Microsoft hands you a CAB that includes patches for SSL, IE, 6 GDI bugs and Windows notepad, that's their problem, not yours.
The one thing that we didn't do (obviously!) was allow automated Windws updates. Then again, considering the damaged that some Windows Updates have done to desktop machines, I didn't even allow that on my desktop machine.
If you can't find a way to get to a million by retirement, something is wrong.
Here is a simple way to do it. Put $16,000 in your 401k and $5,000 in your IRA every year. Investing in a good S&P500 index fund which will return about 10%. In 18 years, you will be a millionaire.
Now getting to $10 million is tough.
Actually, the hard part is getting the first million. Then it feeds itself. Especially since the second million, etc. aren't being held back for basic living expenses.
The real reason why manufacturing is cheaper in China is labor costs, though. Which is why stuff that's heavily automated is often done in the US, despite the more stringent environmental restrictions.
Then again, my position on toxins is that everything that a factory emits that isn't a profitable product means someone hasn't been thinking efficiently. Coal tar, SO2, heavy metals, ash - if they're reclaimed and put to gainful employment you get a cleaner environment and more profit.
Actually, I think my microwave oven cost me closer to $1000. But that's because I bought it long before cheap crap from China. Unlike the cheap crap, it still works fine. Amortized over the years, it's been cheaper than the Wal-Mart junk.
1. Multi-task. Never devote your entire attention to one task when you could be juggling 7.
2. Run Lean. Why hire a dedicated expert developer, a dedicated sysadmin, a dedicated DBA and a dedicated network engineer? Make one person do all those things (see #1, above).
3. Run 100% and demand 110. Who needs expansion room for when things inevitably go pear-shaped? Which Murphy guarantees even when you don't tempt him with #1 and #2.
4. Run cheap. Demand maximum expertise from the lowest bidder. There's always someone in a third-world country who'd be GLAD to do items #1, #2 and #3 for pennies a day!
5. Use easily measured things to determine employee effectiveness. Lines of Code, Time on Phone, stuff that's easily objectively measured, unlike less tangible things like customer satisfaction (what, you think we bother to ANSWER those silly surveys?), externals (like poisoning 6 downwind countries) or time to do the job right the first time. Use these as weapons to demand more of #1, #2, #3 and #4.
6. Subscribe to overpriced buzzword-laden management fads to assist in accomplishing all of the above.
Actually, my first disassembly efforts were directed against the IBM System/370 FORTRAN runtime libraries. When I later took integral calculus I instantly recognized the algorithms as well as the tricks used to fold values over to make them converge more rapidly.
Just because SSL is encryption doesn't mean that the algorithms should be more cryptic. We're still talking polynomial math here to do the heavy lifting. In fact, "clever" code will generally make the encryption less secure, since the more complicated you make things, the more places they can fail.
I reverse-engineered the old Microsoft assembler for CP/M to give it an advanced feature it lacked and did it strictly on my own time and for my own private benefit (pre-DMCA).
You can be certain that open or closed, SOMEONE whose business is penetrating security has people dedicated to ensuring that there's source code to pore over for exploits.
What software do you use that adds up all your sales tax, property tax, fuel tax, and all the other taxes plus the fees that are passed on to you that are hidden in the costs of the goods and services you consume?
You want everything AND a pony. Most of us can get enough blood pressure off the reported Federal rate alone, which is all the 1040 is intended for anyway. If that's not enough, next time you buy gas, read the numbers printed on the fuel pump. The lowest one is the actual gas price, the next highest one is the gas tax and the shockingly big one is the sum of them, which is what you pay at the register.
My property tax I know because the annual statement I get gives me a number that can be used as a deduction off Federal tax. State taxes you do another form for unless you're one of the lucky states, sales tax is what makes everything not cost what the sign in the window says it does.
Merchants are at liberty to find whatever tax solutions they can, but don't expect them to itemize out what they spent or saved on your sales receipt.
Slashdot Mirror
Money is speech?
You are seriously fucked.
Well, actually, it's the price of a louder megaphone.
But such subtleties are lost on the modern-day Supreme Court, which is less interested in preserving the balances of Government and more in their own peculiar interpretation of the Law of the Land.
Republics also support fragmented self-interests. Probably even more so than democracies.
The Founders made the US Government a Republic because they feared the tyranny of the majority would trample out the rights and interests of minorities. They made it a Democratic Republic because they also feared the tyranny of entrenched minorities. Checks and Balances were arguably the single most important consideration given to every facet of their governmental design.
Dollars are a measure of importance. If such an encrusted Pi were actually constructed, it would indeed be newsworthy.
Dollars are speech. Just ask the US Supreme Court.
The race to the bottom started long ago.
The destruction of the worker-employer bond even longer - back in the 1980s.
Tarrifs weren't primarily about environmental responsibility, although indirectly they worked in that direction by favoring local production with its more stringent environmental regulations. But Free Trade has pretty much killed that.
1950's Republicans would probably die of apoplexy. We gave Most Favored trade status to one of the world's biggest Communist countries.
If only there were organized groups of laborers that were able to band together to protect each others rights.
Socialisms! Evil! Burn the commie witch! Only corporations are allowed to work as bands to protect their rights!
Damn, I wish I'd known about that trick back then, that was exactly the problem I was having with mine. I've had a couple of 100$ all in one laserjets (both HP) since then. The one I've got now (I forget the model) is pretty decent, and obviously doesn't require its own nuclear reactor to print, but I do miss the reliability of that 30 pound monstrosity. I do, however, not miss the 5 degree increase in temperature around the thing when it was running though, lol
1KW is about right for one of the old-time laser printers. Warm-up power rush was a bitch and it was recommended not to put them on UPS's or lest they blow breakers.
I swore off HP devices. Most of the printer/scanner/whatever would still be working fine, but the paper traction would go all to hell and even new roller kits wouldn't fix them. Plus my scanner doesn't even offer replacement rollers for the duplexer part of the machine.
"I'm surprised a Logitech mouse was listed, as any I've had, the buttons died within months."
Wtf do you do with yours? Use a pneumatic hammer when you need to click?
My mice (Microsoft AND Logitech) get "Parkinson's Disease". After a while, they won't stay put on point. Not even the optical ones.
People talk about bug free code. It is a matter of won't, not a matter of can't.
Sometimes, there are products out there which can be considered "finished". Done as in no extra features needed, and there are no bugs to be found. Simple utilities like /usr/bin/yes come to mind. More complex utilities can be honed to a reasonable degree of functionality (busybox comes to mind.)
The problem isn't the fact that secure or bug free software can't be made. It is that the procedures and processes to do this require resources, and most of the computer industry runs on the "it builds, ship it!" motto [1]. Unfortunately, with how the industry works, if a firm does do the policy of "we will ship it when we are ready", a competitor releasing an early beta of a similar utility will win the race/contracts. So, it is a race to the bottom.
[1]: The exception to this rule being malware, which is probably the most bug-free code written anywhere these days. It is lean, robust, does what it is purposed to do, and is constantly updated without a fuss.
Once upon a time, I read somewhere (Yourdon, possibly) that the number of bugs in a software product tends to remain constant once the product has reached stability. The number for IBM's OS/MVS mainframe operating system was somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000!
It's been likened to pressing on a balloon where when you squeeze one bump in, another pops out, because the process of fixing bugs itself introduces new bugs.
And OS/MVS is about the most critical software you could put on a mainframe. You can't just Ctrl-Alt-Delete a System/370. Or power it off and back on again. Mainframes are expensive, and expected to work virtually continually. Mainframe developers were expensive as well, since after a million dollars or so of hardware and software, paying programmers handsome salaries wasn't as big an issue back then. Plus there was no offshore race to the bottom where price trumped quality at the time. In fact, there wasn't even "perma-temping" yet.
Still, with all those resources on such an important product, they could only hold the bug count constant, not drive it down to zero.
Actually speaking of OS/MVS, there's a program (IEFBR14) whose sole purpose in life is to do nothing. There have been about 6 versions of this program so far, and several of them were bug fixes. More recently, it had to be upgraded to work properly on 64-bit architecture, but some of the bugs were hardware-independent.
The point being that if you give the ENTIRE project to Oracle instead of just part of it that it would all have been wonderful?
Back in the 1970s, General Electric created a company called Offshore Power Systems that was intended to build floating nuclear plants. I knew some of the people who worked there.
No such plants were ever built, though, and OPS is long gone.
I cancelled my subscription to another Linux magazine when they dropped paper. I figure I get fresher news from my RSS feeds and more up-to-date and more detailed technical info from blogs and project websites.
I truly do love my tablet for reading fiction and even the occasional reference manual, but the ability to randomly flip through a dead-tree magazine and idly learn about something that may someday become important is something I treasure and an e-reader just doesn't do it for me.
Larry wanted to rewrite it using JavaFX LOL
Larry wanted it to do something Sun never did - make a profit so he could build another yacht. He's been hoping to do that with other open-source acquisitions as well.
Unfortunately, people don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on open-source platforms, apps, and tools.
Poor Larry.
While I don't condone it, people in the Finance/Accounting departments have made complete applications in Excel. Then, they throw it over the wall to I/T and say "turn this into a web app for us -- it should take, what, two or three days?"
But again, I've seen plenty of complex spreadsheets that use way more functionality than I as a developer would ever use.
I'd say that you worked for the same company I did.
But at my company they waited until they'd exceeded Excel's row capacity and THEN they threw it over the wall. At which point they were having to break it up into multiple workbooks just to run the business while we scrambled to bail them out. Plus - yay! - critical corporate data existed on a laptop that they'd keep passing around (and occasionally taking out of town) and our IT department didn't backup files on desktops or laptops.
On the whole, I'm inclined to say that when you've gotten to the point that only 100% original Excel can do the job, you've probably reached the point where you shouldn't be doing the job in Excel anyway.
> The one thing that we didn't do (obviously!) was allow automated Windws updates.
> Then again, considering the damaged that some Windows Updates have done to
> desktop machines, I didn't even allow that on my desktop machine.
You have to perform OS updates in some industries. You might disable automatic updates, but that doesn't prevent damage, just that you'll be kicking it off manually.
Not always. Sometimes it's a matter of letting other people be your guinea pigs. Microsoft has on several occasions had to follow up an update with a corrected update, so in cases like that, you just ignore the bad update entirely and skip ahead to the better one.
The other thing deferred updates allow is the ability to do small-scale in-house testing before letting it loose on the entire infrastructure.
They want bureaucracy, they make the paperwork. Tell them to track windows and distro security pages, the changes are there. I would be toasted with that kind of tape, I updated my servers in a pinch immediately after the first news of heartbleed at 3 in the morning. 0300AM right. How about dusting your resume and changing jobs? Let them play the shuffling reports game alone.
I've served on a change control board. Every application and system update was supposed to be bundled to make the sysadmin's job easier, include a document that outlined the nature of the change and why it was needed, the instructions on how to apply the change, and the instructions on how to recover if it didn't work.
Change committee met once a week, approved/scheduled, deferred, or rejected changes. In case of emergency, the CIO or designated proxy could approve an out-of-band change request.
We didn't attempt to micro-manage changes, just understand the business risks and rewards. Obviously, the more details you could capture the better prepared you were to understand the consequences and the ways you could recover. But when Microsoft hands you a CAB that includes patches for SSL, IE, 6 GDI bugs and Windows notepad, that's their problem, not yours.
The one thing that we didn't do (obviously!) was allow automated Windws updates. Then again, considering the damaged that some Windows Updates have done to desktop machines, I didn't even allow that on my desktop machine.
If you can't find a way to get to a million by retirement, something is wrong.
Here is a simple way to do it. Put $16,000 in your 401k and $5,000 in your IRA every year. Investing in a good S&P500 index fund which will return about 10%. In 18 years, you will be a millionaire.
Now getting to $10 million is tough.
Actually, the hard part is getting the first million. Then it feeds itself. Especially since the second million, etc. aren't being held back for basic living expenses.
The real reason why manufacturing is cheaper in China is labor costs, though. Which is why stuff that's heavily automated is often done in the US, despite the more stringent environmental restrictions.
Then again, my position on toxins is that everything that a factory emits that isn't a profitable product means someone hasn't been thinking efficiently. Coal tar, SO2, heavy metals, ash - if they're reclaimed and put to gainful employment you get a cleaner environment and more profit.
except it's a butterfly dropping dead from the lack of breathable air.
"Let a thousand butterflies drop dead".
Mao. Or maybe not.
They cannot be expected to adopt first world environmental standards that took decades for the west to develop.
Why not? We developed the products and now they make them. Why can't they employ the pollution-control technology we developed?
Actually, I think my microwave oven cost me closer to $1000. But that's because I bought it long before cheap crap from China. Unlike the cheap crap, it still works fine. Amortized over the years, it's been cheaper than the Wal-Mart junk.
21st Century Business Logic:
1. Multi-task. Never devote your entire attention to one task when you could be juggling 7.
2. Run Lean. Why hire a dedicated expert developer, a dedicated sysadmin, a dedicated DBA and a dedicated network engineer? Make one person do all those things (see #1, above).
3. Run 100% and demand 110. Who needs expansion room for when things inevitably go pear-shaped? Which Murphy guarantees even when you don't tempt him with #1 and #2.
4. Run cheap. Demand maximum expertise from the lowest bidder. There's always someone in a third-world country who'd be GLAD to do items #1, #2 and #3 for pennies a day!
5. Use easily measured things to determine employee effectiveness. Lines of Code, Time on Phone, stuff that's easily objectively measured, unlike less tangible things like customer satisfaction (what, you think we bother to ANSWER those silly surveys?), externals (like poisoning 6 downwind countries) or time to do the job right the first time. Use these as weapons to demand more of #1, #2, #3 and #4.
6. Subscribe to overpriced buzzword-laden management fads to assist in accomplishing all of the above.
Actually, my first disassembly efforts were directed against the IBM System/370 FORTRAN runtime libraries. When I later took integral calculus I instantly recognized the algorithms as well as the tricks used to fold values over to make them converge more rapidly.
Just because SSL is encryption doesn't mean that the algorithms should be more cryptic. We're still talking polynomial math here to do the heavy lifting. In fact, "clever" code will generally make the encryption less secure, since the more complicated you make things, the more places they can fail.
All source is open if it's worth it to someone.
That's what disassemblers are for.
I reverse-engineered the old Microsoft assembler for CP/M to give it an advanced feature it lacked and did it strictly on my own time and for my own private benefit (pre-DMCA).
You can be certain that open or closed, SOMEONE whose business is penetrating security has people dedicated to ensuring that there's source code to pore over for exploits.
Dammit %19...is that including state? Mine is %35.
You're either in the 1% with bad tax advisors or need to look at how you're calculating things.
I haven't paid 35% since people had lifetime employment and could travel without stripping naked.
What software do you use that adds up all your sales tax, property tax, fuel tax, and all the other taxes plus the fees that are passed on to you that are hidden in the costs of the goods and services you consume?
You want everything AND a pony. Most of us can get enough blood pressure off the reported Federal rate alone, which is all the 1040 is intended for anyway. If that's not enough, next time you buy gas, read the numbers printed on the fuel pump. The lowest one is the actual gas price, the next highest one is the gas tax and the shockingly big one is the sum of them, which is what you pay at the register.
My property tax I know because the annual statement I get gives me a number that can be used as a deduction off Federal tax. State taxes you do another form for unless you're one of the lucky states, sales tax is what makes everything not cost what the sign in the window says it does.
Merchants are at liberty to find whatever tax solutions they can, but don't expect them to itemize out what they spent or saved on your sales receipt.